Lifting Up

In general, my family has always attended pretty traditional churches (Church of Christ, if you are wondering): a.k.a.; a capella, pretty reserved worship and singing, lots of standing and sitting through the service, and communion every sunday.

I will preface this by saying worship (here, singing) is my favorite part of church. I loooove it.

However, at InterVarsity, I've experienced a little different kind of worship. We do have a worship team that includes a few singers, a keyboard, drums, and several different bass and acoustic guitars (oh, and a banjo and violin sometimes too!).

But what is very different to me is the way that people respond to the worship, and to God, during our worship time. People with their hands palm up to the sky, one arm above their heads, both arms outstretched and all sorts of variations on that. Not everyone does it, and it's not for everyone anyway, but I do notice it quite often.

Why would I write about a personal thing like how people respond to worship?

Because I am totally blessed by seeing these people so moved by God and his presence. Though I've never been much of an arm-raiser, when I see my peers and classmates and friends worshipping God fully, it just fills my heart right to the brim. Though part of it lies in the fact that I know that I share in God's blessings with these people, another part is that a lot of adults who are our parents age and older seem to think that we college students are a bunch of hoodlums. But when I see the person a few seats down from me singing their heart out with their hands lifted up, I know that isn't true.

So if you think you might offend someone, or that it might not be appropriate for you to respond to God in a physical, visible way - go ahead - there might be someone just like me watching and waiting to be blessed.

God is good. :)